Free Netlink by William H Keith Page B

the point of absurdity.
    Sometimes Daren wondered if half of the reason behind his drive to meet new species wasn’t the knowledge—the hope, really—that the problems and hatreds separating humans might be forgotten in the face of something, some one really different. He couldn’t think of anything else that stood a chance in hell of making the human race unite.
    “Well?” Taki said at last, looking up at him from within the circle of his arms. “We are scheduled to watch the Communes this afternoon.”
    “Um. Correlations of observed Commune behavior with physical expressions of Nakamura’s Number,” he said, reciting with distaste the title of their current research project. “Wonderful.”
    “Come on! You’re not demonstrating the proper enthusiasm requisite for an up-and-coming xenosophontologist!”
    “I don’t know, Taki,” he said, letting his hand rove across her body. “I’m more interested in another kind of research right now. And so far as physical expressions go—”
    She squealed and playfully batted his hand away. “You know, Daren, if I didn’t know you better, I’d think you just might have had some ulterior motives when you suggested we share this sim.”
    “Who? Me?”
    “You. Never mind giving me the mock innocent look and the big gray eyes. Come on. Let’s try those rocks up the beach.”
    They found a sheltered niche walled by house-sized boulders, floored by soft sand. Their hands, moving with urgent, yearning haste, found the touch seals on one another’s coveralls, and in another few moments they both were naked, exploring one another eagerly with hands and mouths. Their clothing spread out beneath them would keep the sand from irritating the more sensitive parts of their bodies, though Daren wasn’t certain if the sim loaded that much reality. Most ViRsex subroutines boasted in being indistinguishable from the real thing, however, and he didn’t want to take any chances.
    There was reality enough for him in Taki’s image, though, as he lowered her to the ground and eased himself down on top of her.
    And the hell with what his family would think.…

Chapter 6
     
Contagious magic is based upon the assumption that substances which once were joined together possess a continuing linkage; thus an act carried out upon a smaller unit will affect the larger unit even though they are physically separated.

    — The Golden Bough
    S IR J AMES F RAZIER
    C . E . 1923

    The floater car hummed quietly, slipping through one impeller field after another as it flashed through the late evening sky toward Cascadia. Derived from the QEC nanofields first employed by the military, impeller fields were projected by stabilized clouds of nano spaced along the traffic routes to and from the various cities of New America.
    The vehicle was controlled by its AI, interacting with the far larger artificial intelligence at the traffic control complex in Jefferson. Kara could have linked in with the machine if she’d wanted to exercise a measure of control over the flight—she nearly always did—but this time she had a passenger with her, and she was enjoying the conversation.
    “You can’t hate these affairs as much as you let on,” he was telling her.
    She gave her passenger a sidelong glance. Lieutenant Ran Ferris was the commanding officer of the Black Phantoms’ First Company, Third Squadron, the 1/3, as she was CO of the 1/1. He was tall, good-looking in a rough-hewn and crooked-grinned way, and he was smart. She’d found herself attracted to him almost from the first day he’d joined the Phantoms two years earlier. They’d enjoyed good, clean, recreational ViRsex together any number of times, using a link through the regiment’s rec center com modules, and even shared the real thing four times… or was it five now? It hardly mattered. Kara preferred virtual sex to the groping and sweaty real-world article, though she had to admit that Ran was good, both in virtual reality and